US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year • Hacker News Board

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#41

Post by legolas2412 » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

beisner wrote: post #40

One demographic this policy seems to unintentionally trample is international students. There’s a pretty well-trod path of F1 Visa -> OPT -> (OPT STEM Extension) -> H1B -> (green card, if you’re from the right country). It’s a tall order to expect that all new grads from this path will be able to command such high salaries, and there’s an existing set of international students who have planned their lives on being ab…

> we should encourage immigration through our higher-education system (and we have been doing so for decades)

Having gone through the numbers just yesterday, I was very surprised. So, here's the correction for you. No, america does not encourage immigration through education and subsequent employment. Out of roughly 550k green cards per year, only around 15k are for educated immigrants coming through employment categories (eb1,2,3).

For comparison, there are around 50k diversity visas given in lotteries, and 8k investors visas given out to anyone willing to buy a green card.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#42

Post by GoblinSlayer » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

olliej wrote: post #31

Seems like this would be a problem for smaller companies (not much cash) and startups (remuneration is stock based). Large companies can absorb the cost if someone is that important. They can also just employ remotely and do an internal company transfer later (L-something visa). I mean the big people it screws are those companies that abuse the system - the IT "consulting" companies, that are functionally a market un…

Do remote workers need visas?

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#43

Post by silexia » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

innagadadavida wrote: post #9

ksaho wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you meant to say "Trump NOT be re-elected tomorrow". If Biden comes in would he cow-tow to the tech companies and undo this?

What makes you think the big tech companies didn't lobby for this? It conveniently kills many of the startups that can challenge big tech. It will continue no matter who's elected.

This law damages the American economy. Now companies will just have people work overseas for far cheaper and that money will leave the American economy.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#44

Post by unishark » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

beisner wrote: post #40

One demographic this policy seems to unintentionally trample is international students. There’s a pretty well-trod path of F1 Visa -> OPT -> (OPT STEM Extension) -> H1B -> (green card, if you’re from the right country). It’s a tall order to expect that all new grads from this path will be able to command such high salaries, and there’s an existing set of international students who have planned their lives on being ab…

Perhaps they should do a better job of taking ties into account somehow. But when there's a line a million people long, the rules need to be very clear and fair, else it's just up to the mood of the agent you end up dealing with that day.

And a problem with any path being a sure thing is that it turns into a route to buy residency. People will line up to hack it. There's a lot of low-tier colleges in the US. And are you including MS degrees? Apparently some can be done in a year, plus internships (CPT) which is yet more work visa.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#45

Post by GoblinSlayer » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #26

vaidhy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not so simple. We do not act in a world with perfect information to predict the supply and demand curve. There are only 65,000 H1B in a year of which 20,000 are prioritized for people with a masters degree in US. Given the economy of size of US and the kind of roles being filled by H1B, it is doubtful that they have any meaningful impact on wages. There are bad actors who take advantage of H1B to get people to…

> do not see the same talk about H2 (agricultural workers) coming in to work in US and people arguing that they are making the farm wages depressed. That’s just because people affected by that policy are not able (or educated enough) to make their argument in any forum you might be reading, and have long resigned to the idea that they are shit jobs anyway so might as well leave them to the poorest of the Earth — part…

There's belief that lack of demand from locals is prejudice, when imported workforce is a system and established business processes, one can't really go and change this system.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#46

Post by unishark » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #37

runawaybottle wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? Prior discussions on this made me aware that H1B is mostly not profitable for the consulting firms. It’s the offshore work where they can severely underpay. So long as a US company can get offshore workers via the consulting firms (their preferred business model), all is well. But ya, we don’t need to import someone doing JavaScript over to America anymore (which, believe it or not, is what I’ve witne…

> But ya, we don’t need to import someone doing JavaScript over to America anymore (which, believe it or not, is what I’ve witnessed). There’s no rhyme or reason to it, we have a solid home grown talent pool for that. Being able to program language X isn't really the marketable skillset at the high level. You don't hire good javascript programmers. You hire good programmers

Unfortunately I think there are a lot of people who know the technology to some limited degree to do some tasks, but indeed cannot really program. They do testing or something, running scripts and needing a lot of supervision.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#47

Post by TheCoelacanth » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

beisner wrote: post #40

One demographic this policy seems to unintentionally trample is international students. There’s a pretty well-trod path of F1 Visa -> OPT -> (OPT STEM Extension) -> H1B -> (green card, if you’re from the right country). It’s a tall order to expect that all new grads from this path will be able to command such high salaries, and there’s an existing set of international students who have planned their lives on being ab…

You're correct on the impact, but I don't think it's unintentional. This administration is clearly trying to cut down on immigration in general.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#48

Post by sieabahlpark » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #47

beisner wrote: post #40

One demographic this policy seems to unintentionally trample is international students. There’s a pretty well-trod path of F1 Visa -> OPT -> (OPT STEM Extension) -> H1B -> (green card, if you’re from the right country). It’s a tall order to expect that all new grads from this path will be able to command such high salaries, and there’s an existing set of international students who have planned their lives on being ab…

You're correct on the impact, but I don't think it's unintentional. This administration is clearly trying to cut down on immigration in general.

> This administration is clearly trying to cut down on immigration in general.

Illegal immigration and immigration abuse through the dev shops which hire exclusively h1b and pay them worse. This new initiative makes the sweatshop less viable.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#49

Post by triceratops » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

beisner wrote: post #40

One demographic this policy seems to unintentionally trample is international students. There’s a pretty well-trod path of F1 Visa -> OPT -> (OPT STEM Extension) -> H1B -> (green card, if you’re from the right country). It’s a tall order to expect that all new grads from this path will be able to command such high salaries, and there’s an existing set of international students who have planned their lives on being ab…

What makes you think it's unintentional? In addition to depressing educated, skilled immigration, it has the desirable side-effect of depressing revenues for "lefty, liberal, coastal, elitist" universities, who admit those international students and charge them full non-resident tuition.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#50

Post by runawaybottle » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #37

runawaybottle wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? Prior discussions on this made me aware that H1B is mostly not profitable for the consulting firms. It’s the offshore work where they can severely underpay. So long as a US company can get offshore workers via the consulting firms (their preferred business model), all is well. But ya, we don’t need to import someone doing JavaScript over to America anymore (which, believe it or not, is what I’ve witne…

> But ya, we don’t need to import someone doing JavaScript over to America anymore (which, believe it or not, is what I’ve witnessed). There’s no rhyme or reason to it, we have a solid home grown talent pool for that. Being able to program language X isn't really the marketable skillset at the high level. You don't hire good javascript programmers. You hire good programmers

You know other countries also have multi million dollar companies too. At scale, I don’t ever see them importing American talent because ‘no one else can do it in our country’. It’s just pure bullshit, there’s 300+ million people across a lot of these countries. At scale, the talent is there, in every country.